Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel […]
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream […]
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

—The windmills of your mind.

I’m both amused and bemused when readers of my posts react to the myriad highlighted links with a certain alarm at finding themselves pursuing my arcane thought-processes down the rabbit-warren that this blog has become (e.g. in my annual roundups, “like a suburban Sisyphus doing and undoing a jigsaw”).

The links are of two kinds: to articles, websites, or pdfs by other authors, and to other posts on this site. They are rarely a red herring, or a wild goose chase—honest guv. While the Plain People of Ireland are quite entitled to their dismay, the consternation of erudite academics seems curious, when they are used to taking in their stride in-text references and ponderous Teutonic footnotes (like de Selby in The third policeman)—keen to consult a reference to Karlgren’s Grammata Serica Recensa which in turn will lead them to early Sogdian manuscripts and thence to medieval viniculture… Only you no longer have to spend a day consulting index cards in a library. And I like to think that I’m performing a public service by distracting such scholars for a moment from their niche focus on Song-dynasty Daoist ritual texts or baroque performance practice—whether by broadening the scope of enquiry or by being reminded of an apposite joke (see e.g. my taxonomy of Chinese jokes, under The joys of indexing). And (suitably equipped with a long ball of string) you can always find your way back to where you started.

Sir, you try my patience!
I don’t mind if I do—you must come over and try mine sometime.

— Groucho.

Even those less obsessively monocultural readers must be used to consulting websites full of links to related topics—like when an online article about the latest pompous idiocies of The Haunted Pencil leads you to other iniquities of the Tory “government”. Perhaps part of the challenge of my personal labyrinth is that its associations are so diverse, keeping you guessing. But that’s Like Life, innit?!

Oops, I seem to have done it again here… Please excuse me! But anyway, my Word Press stats suggest that remarkably few readers ever click on the links (even within roundups, or playlists such as this, where not doing so is like consulting a library catalogue but not looking at any of the books)—which causes me a certain distress 😟 (see The art of emoji)… Go on, give it a whirl!